A lot I can tell you! So I decided to sum it all up on this page. Most of the stories are accompanied with pictures. Enjoy reading the stories!

Update on Kai

December 16, 2006

Hi dear fuzzyfriends, just a little update on Kai. He is doing better
by the day. We are giving him a homeopathic treatment as well as the
normal anti-biotic and other medication. He kept chewing on the cloth
but after the homeopathic he stopped in a day! He is playful again and
together with his sister Bo, he's having fun.

And then is some general information. Since a few weeks ago we are
also known as webferrets.nl without the 'the' in the domainname. We
also moved to another hostingprovider, one with superb quality and service.

Kai

December 1, 2006

Hello fuzzyfriends, time for a major update. A lot has happened around here and it is about time to tell you all about it.

Let me tell you about Kai.... As you might know, Kai and his sister Bo were born on May 5th, 2004 and we were determined to our very best in the sense of health care, proper housing and, very important, giving the best qualitative nutrition.
First, let me take you back to the beginning of 2006. At that moment we already gave Kai and Bo little pieces of fresh uncooked chicken or red meat. We did this because there became more information and new ideas were spreading the forums on ferret food. More and more ferretowners began giving their ferrets raw meat besides the usual dry ferret food. This whole new thing became even more exciting as this lead to ferretowners giving bare and raw food, now known as BARF (Bare And Raw Food).
After giving Kai and Bo raw pieces of meat and a food called Carnibest (which was basically nothing more then grounded BARF), we thought it was a good idea to give Kai and Bo the real stuff. A couple forum members we knew were already into BARF and they were very positive; their ferrets grew a more beautiful coat and became a picture of health.
So, encouraged with all this good news, we bought our first sack of very tiny frozen mice. There were called Pinkies and they had the size of the tip of your pink.
As you possibly know ferrets only eat the food they were giving to them in the first six months of their lives. The taste of that particular food is imprinted in their memory and any other food that doesn't match with the imprint will be avoided because they simply haven't learned that it is food.
Now here we had our first problem; they had not ever tasted a mouse and all they did was drag it around the cage and hide it in about every corner. We were al little disappointed but we were not giving up so easily! And guess what? The second day the pinkies were gone!
We looked all around in the cage but they were not there so the only conclusion was that they had been eaten by Kai and/or Bo!

From that moment on we were giving them a mouse on a daily base and they seem to like it a lot. We also talked about this on our favorite ferret forum and more and more of the forum members started with giving BARF to their ferrets. The mice are a little larger now (about the size of a thumb) and every next day when we check their cage, everything is gone. They eat the complete mouse as they would do in a natural environment. At one day, we took the plunge and bought two little quails with only removed feathers. We cut them in half and gave one part before we went to bed.....
The next day we were very curious of course so we sneaked to the cage.... Horror!! They made a total mess of their cage! About everything was smeared with the insides of the quail. Only little was eaten so this seemed to be an unsuccessful experiment. Our forum friends kept pushing and encouraging us; they didn't have that problem and we must not give in. So the next night we dropped the leftovers from the quail back into the cage and went to bed.
And guess what? The next morning everything was gone! Three cheers for Kai and Bo! Still we didn't knew who ate it, was it only Kai or Bo or did they both ate from it?

Happy with the fact that Kai and Bo were on BARF, we gave the other half of the quail and the same thing happened, it was gone the next morning. We kept giving Carnibest and mice and occasionally a half of a quail. We noticed that the dry food was hardly touched and we were very happy with this situation...... Until two weeks ago.....
On a Monday morning we opened the cage and it was very clear that Kai wasn't feeling well. He acted very lethargic and only wanted to lie down. This wasn't a normal behavior so Marjanne lifted him to feel his belly. This was painful and that was absolutely not a good sign.
We didn't hesitate and called our vet if we could make an appointment for that same day. Luckily, this was not a problem so we took Kai for an one hour drive to the vet.
When we arrived, Kai was still very silent and non responsive. The vet diagnosed a inflammation of his stomach and proposed surgery. Of course we agreed with this so we said good-bye to our big guy Kai and went home....
Later that afternoon we received a phonecall from the vet. Everything went well, she had removed his gallbladder, this was affected with the inflammation as well and she removed a lot of 'stuff' out of his stomach. This stuff looked a bit like bones and hairs.... She also took a little piece of his stomach for further examination. Her conclusion was that Kai suffered from an food allergy or an inflammation in his stomach. The last option can only be confirmed with the result of the examination of the little piece she took from his stomach.

Two days later we could come to take him home so we did. The vet warned us that he was still feeling nauseous and that he had a long way to go. We had a look at the stuff she took out of his stomach and indeed it appeared that there were bits of bones and hairs. We decided to stop with the quail.....
At home we introduced Kai with Bo again and as expected, Bo reacted with a bit of a fright. Luckily, that lasted not for long and in the days that followed Kai kept very sluggish and for the first time in her life Little Bo jumped all over Kai, knowing that he wouldn't a thing to her! It looked funny but the truth was that is wasn't a good sign. We tried to encourage Kai but all he wanted to do was lying on his bed.
He also began chewing on clothes. He did this before but it became worse now because his nausiousness. We mentioned this on the forum and our good friend Denise, who is a vet with homeopathic treatment as specialism, told us she could make a medication to treat this behavior. We gave Kai this medication (a few drops of liquid) for three days and the chewing stopped! This was amazing because he was feeling a lot better and suddenly he began to play again! We were so happy! Our Kai was back!!!

A couple of days has past since then and Kai is doing better every day. They have had some mice again and they still love it. Until the result is still unknown we temporarily stop giving quail.
Thankfully, we noticed his strange behavior in time and hopefully we know the result of his stomach coming week. For now he is doing just great!!

Ferret symposium

October 29, 2006

Hi fuzzylovers! Yesterday we were present at the second Ferretsymposium in the Netherlands. The organization had found four speakers to brought us several speeches.

The first speaker was Bob Church. He is an American zooarcheologist with an enormous knowledge on polecats and ferrets and especially domestication and behavior. He is also a great entertainer and is was wonderful to listen to him.
The second speaker was Dr. Nico Schoemaker from the Netherlands. His latest research is on alternatives for surgically neutering ferrets. His speech described a new method of implants and was very informative and opened a lot of eyes.
The third speech came from Dr. Susan Brown from the US. She is an authority on ferrets in the US and was the founder of the "Greater Chicago Ferret Association" in 1986. She is momentarily not active as a vet but she is working on several projects concerning ferrets and rabbits. She spoke to us about the diet of a ferret and she was really a wonderful speaker.
The fourth speaker was again from the Netherlands, our one and only ferretvet, Dr. Hanneke Moorman. For us she needs no introduction (well, to be true, the whole audience knows her very well!). She spoke to us about the risks and research on ADV (Aleutian Disease Virus). Once again, an eye-opener for lots of us.

In the afternoon we were presented with other speeches from the four and it was really great to listen to them. Personally I was very fond of Dr. Susan Brown. She talked about the older ferret and the care of it. Lots of things we heard her tell was superb and her love of ferrets is beyond words. That is also applicable on Bob Church and he is really a 'great' man.

Between the speeches there was time to talk to other people and we met a lot of friends. There was also an auction and as you might have read in our Painting section, we also brought up an item to sell, the painting of Artax. At the ending of the auction it appeared that Dr. Hanneke Moorman bought the painting to give it as a personal gift to the Chairwoman of the Dutch Ferret Foundation, Stephenie Baas. Needless to say that she was really thrilled with it!

We also bought an item and this is something you would not see elsewhere else since there is only one of this. It is a sculpture of a ferret angel and is a wonderful piece of work of Marjolein. Well, just see for yourself!

We had a fantastic day yesterday and we are certain to visit the next symposium! Thank you Stichting De Fret for making this possible and keep up the good work!

Buffy

October 15, 2006

Hello dear ferretfriends..... Unfortunately we have some very sad news.

Our light of our life, Buffy, isn't longer with us. On October 12th, we gave
her the well earned rest she deserved.

This all happened so fast.... Just a week ago I wrote that she wasn't
doing that well but at the end of that week we noticed a rapidly deterioration.
Her belly was getting large due fluid and she was getting very weak
in her hind legs. When she was crawling up to Marjan to be with her
we knew that this was moment to let her go....

Dear Buffy, we will miss you terribly. No other ferret has ever had such impact on our lives. Your looks, your eyes and your love.... Our lives will never be the same without you. Good-bye little girl, have fun on the Rainbow Bridge...

We herewith would like to thank our very good friend Denise who came over that late night and helped Buffy to cross the Bridge.

Buffy

October 9, 2006

Hi ferretfriends, time for a little update. In the past few weeks we
noticed that Buffy is not going that well. Since she is still suffering
from a decaying liver we took her to the vet last week. Remarkably,
her bloodlevels showed to be pretty good, not that good as you would
expect from a healthy ferret but we feared a much more negative outcome.
The vet listened very good to our stories on Buffy and she adjusted
the medical treatment. We have been giving her a higher dose of one
medication but we still aren't very happy how she is doing... On the
other hand, she is almost seven and an half years old so she is also
displaying the natural aging things like unstable on her hind legs.

So, we have to watch her very carefully. Our lady is getting old and
we both are very afraid of that very painful moment....

New painting!

September 18, 2006

Hello dear fuzzylovers... There is a new painting up at the Painting
section!! I thought you might wanna know! Hit the button at your left
or clik here.

Luna

August 28, 2006

Hi dear ferretfriends..... How fast and sudden can life go on, or not. Just about a week ago I told you the story on out little Luna and what was wrong with her. Now I have to bring you the sad news, Luna is no longer with us....

We noticed that our attempt to give Luna back a decent 'ferret-live' wasn't working. She became more and more nervous and she had that agitated look in her eyes. Today we went back to the vet to have another look at her.

After taking and examining some blood the outcome was shocking..... She still suffered from a very high level of bloodsugar which made her feel very uncomfortable and sick. Her -only one working- kidney just couldn't clean her blood and therefore the urea level was very high. In other words, she was poisoning herself... This also showed in other failures; her sight became less. One time we noticed her walking straight to the wall and not often she would scared by our hands while taking her out of her cage. She just didn't see our hands coming.... The vet also suspected a high bloodpressure although this was something that couldn't be confirmed since it is practically not possible to measure this on ferrets.

All these things together only led to one conclusion. We had to let her go... The vet offered another solution. She could Luna in and try some other kind of treatment. Both of us felt that this was not what Luna deserved. She already had been going through a lot of this and we felt that this had to be the end.
So this morning we said good-bye to her and we gave her the so much deserved rest.

We will miss you little Luna but we know that on the Rainbow bridge your soulmate Sisko will be waiting for you....

Update on Luna

August 20, 2006

Hello dear fuzzylovers! First of all, let me apologize for not updating this section for so long. We have had a very hectic couple of weeks behind us and finally we are getting some peace of mind overhere now. We have sold our house and we are now officially owner of our ship. We had to go through a lot of trouble to get things settled and arranged but luckily, this has all come to an end.
W

e spent our vacation here at home (or 'on the ship') and we had the best weather of all (it was the hottest July ever in the Netherlands!).

We also had some trouble with our little Luna. As you can read below, our Sisko died during a sedation to examine him. He was suffering from a heart disease and the sedation became fatal for him.
During that same visit we also had Luna with us and our vet told us after she had examined her, that she needed to undergo surgery to investigate more of what was wrong with her. She also told that Luna had a more than normal risk of not coming out of the sedation because she had only one working kidney. The other one had shrunk and didn't work anymore.
Since we already (and unexpectedly) had to say good-bye to Sisko, we didn't dare to let Luna with the vet for surgery. Loosing two ferrets on one day would be to much for us.
So we decided to take Luna back home and make a later appointment for the surgery.

This appointment took place during our vacation. We brought Luna to the vet and we were told that after the surgery she had to stay for at least a couple of days to see if things were going all right. Of course, we agreed. She would be looked after by the best vet and assistants there are!
Later that day we received a phonecall from our vet. The surgery went well and she told that Luna's gallbladder was removed as well some pieces from her liver and insulinomia. Luckily, she came out of the sedation very well and she had already eaten some Totally Ferret. So far so good!

After some days however, Luna became a very difficult patient. It was very hard to administer her the medication she needed and it almost became some sort of fight with her.
Meanwhile it became clear that it would take more time before we could get her back so after a week we decided to go and see her. When we saw her we were shocked, she had lost a lot of weight. Luna always was a little ferret weighting around a little under 600 grams, but she was now very skinny. This was all because of the fact that she wouldn't eat properly. It was very difficult for us to see Luna like that and with pain in our heart we went home again, without little Luna. Everyday we called the vet and every day she was doing a little better. After two and a half week we got the good news that we could Luna and bring her back home.

In the days that followed we struggled with the fact that she didn't wanted to eat the prescribed food. It seemed that Luna had very much trouble with the fact that she wasn't allowed to eat Totally Ferret and she lost weight again..... A couple of days ago she weighted just 485 grams and she acted very nervous and stressed. We couldn't bare to see this any longer so we decided to put a little TF in her manger. Miraculously, she became a lot more at ease and she didn't tremble anymore. Her weight is climbing, day by day a few grams. It is funny to see how she reacted on the simple fact that she can pick a chow from the TF when she pleases and that is comforting her.

There is only one other problem.... Since we kept her apart from the rest of the group to recover from the surgery we had to introduce her back into the group. Things went wrong..... Buffy didn't accept Luna's return anymore! This was a big problem because we do not wanted to have three groups (being Buffy, Kai and Bo and then separate Luna and Cat). We had to reschedule our day to let them run free separate before going to work as well in the afternoon and evening.
One day we tried to let Luna meet Cat but wasn't successful neither. They snapped at each other and it was clear that they weren't the biggest friends. In the near future we are going to give it another try but we do not think it is going to work....

Here is a picture of Luna asleep. Note her little naked belly :-)

Bo rocks!

June 18, 2006

Hi dear fuzzyfriends, I have to apologize for the delayed announcement of the winner of our June quiz. We are so tangled up in the whole situation of selling our house and well, to be honest, I completely had forgotten about it.

Luckily there are some great friends of ours who were so kind remembering me :o). I received several emails, personal messages on the forum, our Guestbook was spammed and I even got an sms! Thanks crazy girls ;o), you know who I mean!

So the winner is someone from Belgium and we hope that she and her ferrets likes the prize. We shall drop the parcel of at the postoffice this coming Monday.

I also managed to make some funny shots from Bo. We have a sort of parrot cage. Not a 'real' cage but more for decoration purposes. Bo was very intrigued by it and found herself here way in. She tried to climb the swing but failed and a that point I took a shot. Poor Bo!!!!

Ferret Xpress

May 24, 2006

Hello dear fuzzylovers, time for a little update. I have been writing about the Dutch Ferret Foundation's forum before and I would like to tell you about something that originated from this forum. We call it The Ferret-Xpress!

The executive committee of the foundation keeps close contact with several ferret shelters in The Netherlands. These shelters give home to abandoned ferrets, stray ferrets or to ferrets who are no longer welcome by their owners. If a ferret is in need of a shelter, the committee contacts the most nearby shelter to see if there is any space for this ferret available. Often, these ferrets do not belong to any one because they are just dropped of in the forest or they are escaped and no one is claiming him or her back. In those cases is is always a problem to get the ferret to the shelter because a car is not at hand, people don't have the time for it or the distance is to far to make the trip by public transfer. Also a often recurring problem is the fact that in almost any case, the ferret needs immediate attention of a vet!

This problem/situation always became a point of discussion on the forum so a couple of good people decided to start what we call now The Ferret eXpress. The Ferret eXpress is al close group of people that can act fast in order to get a ferret from one point to the shelter that can handle the ferret. The committee keeps a close and growing list of people and whenever there is need, the committee contacts the one person who is living nearby the place where the ferret is and that person takes the ferret to the next person and so on until the ferret is safely handed over to the shelter.

We are proud to belong to this group of people! And last Monday the committee called upon us. There were two ferrets located in our former hometown that were taken away by people we accidentally knew. In the past they were also the same who took a ferret in their home that later became a ferret of us, Cat! Now, the situation was practically the same. They had taken away two ferrets from 'friends'. Those friends didn't want them anymore and had already plans for dumping the ferrets in a nearby forest. The people who had the ferrets now also had not plans to keep them after a few phonecalls we knew we could pick them up and bring them to a shelter where there was room for two more.
The ferrets were handed over and today the are going to be examined by a vet. Hopefully these two will find a new home soon!!

Box of memories

April 3, 2006

Hi dear fuzzylovers, last Saturday we had a close group of other ferretlovers visiting us. We all know each other through the Dutch Ferret Foundation's Forum and on a regular base we all meet to do fun things such as a guided trip through a national park and eating pancakes.

We invited them over at our house, that is ship :o) to enjoy a meal of Indonesian origin. We love to cook so it is always fun to have some friends over and have a nice afternoon and evening. Although we know each other only for a short period of time, we all consider them as friends now and we feel very close to this group of people who all share that one passion, ferrets!

This meeting was kind of special since they all expressed their sympathy on the Forum after we tolled them that Sisko had passed away. So one of them, Birgit, came up with this very cute and warm present. She gave us was she called 'a box of Memories'. This beautiful box contained a small picture frame to put a picture of Sisko in, an heartshaped box to put our most beloved memories in, a smaller box for all those little memories and lots of blank pieces of paper to write down our memories of Sisko.

This present is so very sweet and thoughtful and hereby we again would like to thank Birgit very much!

What you see lying in front of the box is a piece of plaster with an imprint of Sisko's paw made by the vet just after he died. This is done by our vet as a gift to remember a lost pet. This is also a gracious gesture and we are very happy to have something of Sisko this way. Thank you Hanneke!

Sisko

March 27, 2006

Hello dear ferretfriends, today is another sad day for us. As you probably know, our Sisko has a heart disease. Today this became fatal for him. During a visit at the vet, his heart stopped while he was undergoing a very light sedation because one of his teeth had to be pulled.

Within seconds his heart stopped and even the vet couldn't do anything about it.

We knew there was a risk but we couldn't let him live with pain so we decided to take a chance, a chance we lost.....

Dear Sisko, soulmate of Luna. You were always there for the others and we often took you with us as chaperone when one of our other ferrets needed to see the vet. They would curl themselves up against you and so they felt comfortable during the trip. They are going to miss you terribly just as we do...

Good-bye dear Sisko, have fun over the Rainbowbridge and say hi to the rest of all our loved and missed ones...

Just a short update

February 5, 2006

Hi fuzzylovers, how are you doing? As you might have read, we have moved back to Amsterdam and we live on a ship at this moment. Here is a picture of our 'vessel'

Sisko is doing a little better. Besides his regular medication, we are also giving him some homeopathic medication. This medication is specially made for him by a good friend of us. She is a vet and she specializes in animal homeopathy. Thanks to her knowledge, Sisko is a lot more active and more playful. Of course his heart disease won't be go away by this medication but his condition has really improved by this medication. The same can be said of Buffy. She also gets a homeopathic medicine and she is doing very, very well on it. She is even playing with Kai and Bo! It is fun to watch her play with Kai who is about three as big and heavy as she is. Instinctually, Kai feels that he has to be careful with her so he doesn't really jump or attack her so he lets do Buffy the jumping and attacking. He is so cute with her!

Welcome 2006!

January 8, 2006

Hi ferretfriends! This is our first news post in 2006! We would like to wish you all the best for this year and we hope that you will keep on loving the fuzzy animals we all love so much; ferrets!!

As we wrote before, we sold our house and moved back to Amsterdam to live on a ship. Well, we actually do now!! Some two weeks ago we moved over all our stuff and since then we are living on a coaster named Kasper Ohm. We were familiar with this ship because my wife's brother used to live on it but it is a bit strange when you find yourself suddenly living on it.
The ferrets handled the moving pretty good. Since we are living 'down deck' they also have access to our bedroom. It took them just a couple of days to clean out the drawers from our wardrobe so we just left it empty and laid down some old sleeping bags. Kai and Bo found their way upon our bed so very often when we think it's time to put them into their cages, Kai is sleeping on top of the bedspread and Bo underneath it.

Our Sisko however, isn't doing very well. After a visit at the vet recently, his heart strength is diminishing. After consideration with our vet we doubled his medication as a last hope that his heart will be getting less weakened. He is also coughing a lot and often we have to administer him his medication in the middle of the night because of this coughing. It is hard to see that his mind is still so young, sometimes he is very playful but after a couple of minutes he stops because his body won't cooperate anymore....

This evening a good friend of ours is visiting us. She is also a vet but she specializes in animal homeopathy. She already had sent us a medication which we give Sisko and it seems that this makes him feel better. We told this to our friend and she suggested another treatment she thought would be more appropriate for Sisko. We are very hopeful!